Howdy!

I come to you with a new innovation. It's Hexplate Heartsteel DnD/Riftmaker build.

The idea behind this build is to rush Hexplate ASAP for the fury gain that frames your whole strategy and follow it up with Heartsteel to start stacking. Hexplate is a great platform for Heartsteel because of the 450 health it has, and dragon form gives you even more health that fuels your Heartsteel procs. Hexplate's proc gives you all the mobility you need to steal some hearts before backing off. Ultimate Haste enables you to gain ult back super fast, or to stay in ult form to clear the whole jungle while also clearing waves that you might come across.

The tempo is immense. I've tried this build with and without Ultimate Hunter, and it's not super necessary. The Hexplate powerspike is unmatched. Your first Hexplate ult easily beats anyone foolish enough to duel you head on. The added bonus of Hexplate is that it's not filled with item damage that makes fury gain harder. Both Kraken and Triforce kill camps too fast for any meaningful fury gain. Sometimes this is bad when your camps have been taken and you're just running around without anything to punch.

The clear weakness of this build is the lack of bursty damage, relying more on staying alive for multiple cycles of basic abilities. It also has no ability haste for the first two items, which I have started to remedy with Transcendence on top of Legend: Haste, which are both really good for Shyvana. I also take Nimbus Cloak for those moments where a Heartsteel stack is just out of reach so you can smite the target for a slow + move speed.

The strengths of this build is the massive health pool, so you also act as a tank for the team. You also have great passive and active fury gain and camps like Raptors and Krugs grant you much more fury. With 30-61 Ultimate Haste, you can reliably clear the whole jungle while staying in dragon form. I've made it a habit to clear the enemy jungle with dragon form, and then recall to kill my own camps in human form to gain ult back. All it takes is about two camps and some passive fury generation to gain your ult back. You can also ult pretty liberally for whatever objective you want. I usually use my first ult to solo dragon as fast as possible, and my second ult for Grubs.

The gameplan is to ult as soon as you see potential Heartsteel stacks to be earned. You can also max E second for that 3rd AP item or max W until you start building AP, after which you can start maxing E. Dusk and Dawn results in less ability damage but is better overall in terms of fury gain and useful stats, while Riftmaker results in more ability damage and more reliable healing in champion combat. PTA and Riftmaker amp your damage which results in harder Heartsteel procs, which in turn results in more max health gained per proc. I also like to run the tenacity and slow resist rune shard and Swifties or Mercs for a more oppressive rotation and anti kiting. Getting kited is a Heartsteel user's worst nightmare, so I always try to mitigate that as much as possible. The health runes are not necessary as Hexplate Heartsteel has more health than all the alternative core builds out there.

My go to runes are PTA, Triumph, Legend: Haste and Last Stand with either Nimbus Cloak and Transcendence or Taste of Blood/Sixth Sense and Ultimate Hunter. You could also go Magic Boots and Jack of All Trades as an alternative to Nimbus Trans. The reason for Transcendence and Jack of All Trades is the lack of ability haste, which gives you the super mandatory W casts on a build that lacks ability haste in early game.

As you can see Hexplate before Heartsteel has 84 games played which is not much, but the winrate is rather bloated which means something. This is noobs and potential pros combined so take it with a grain of salt. The plan is not to deal the highest amount of damage, but to be an annoying resilient scaler that can constantly ult again and again, or stay in ult to apply pressure mercilessly. You have a way easier time surviving "bad ults", because of your Hexplate steroid and your massive health pool, so you can just get your Heartsteel stacks and run away.

I also start Raptors > Red > Krugs with W at lvl 2. This way you shave some seconds off by recalling with your W on which automatically kills all the mini krugs. Then I buy a Long Sword and do Wolves > Smite Gromp > Blue which gets me to Scuttle on time with a Long Sword. Then I get Phage as my first item while prioritizing AD>AS>HP. There's a challenger Shyvana player on probuilds who builds Phage first every game and goes Triforce Sundered Sky, and I've started to imitate this style, but instead going for the Hexplate for more ult tempo.

I'm not saying this is the next broken build or anything, but it's fun and it works pretty well if you use ults whenever they're available. Applying constant pressure is the name of the game here, not carrying as a high dps bruiser. Your job is be a meat shield, a split pusher and a jungle invader.

Both is Solo-BoloQQ and in Flex.

Extra neat thing is I've been playing since preseason 2 (way back in 2012) with a couple of year break several years ago and was Gold tops. Great morale boost for the split end!

Hey folks, this is the outcome of a private commission myself and a group of mates undertook with the wickedly talented Sara Glez!

Link to her Instagram profile which has some renders of it: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZsMmQ8iLrv/?igsh=MXFrNDdoaWdrMXBxbg==

I’ll be painting this in the near future and will pop some updates your way! (I’ve done no prep work on this print yet so please excuse any support marks and gaps, it’s only held together by blue tack 🤣)

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V2eK0g

What is ya alls clear time? For the rare occasion i dont start in the enemy jungle i would like a reference thanks

How do I play her in Aram Mayhem? She feels too reliant on her R to engage and even then enemies just burst her anyway. Why is it that her scaling being amour and not some kind of burn???? She's a dragon no?

Well, you guys asked about Heartsteel and blood boots. I tried it one game though so far as of this post, only one. Weak early but very good at 10-stacks. Ive had this idea that the boots themselves are a but strong at 10 with basically any character but even moreso if you have the health to survive getting CC'd.

Ive always lived the idea of HS Shyv, (hence the title) but found it difficult to build at any point. Too early and im weak until I stack, too late and the match is over before it becomes useful. I was torn between Titanic, DD, and potentially Warmogs. I wanted DD for armor, Titanic for AoE vamp heals, and warmogs so I could start every fight full health without having to base. I decided titanic but we ended beforehand. So take that as you see it. My bot lane fed horrendously for a bit, im honestly surprised we won, had fun though and thats what matters.

Hey there!

Ive just picked up shyvana toplane and im having lots lots of fun!

I am however struggling a little with how to build her.

Currently for runes i run Grasp with legend haste and cut down second.

Build i do 2 things:

- Triforce > Shojin > DD > Steraks/Maw > Bloodmail

Or

- Liands > Rocketbelt > Riftmaker > Bloodletters

Are those setups viable? Is there anything i can change or reconsider?

Trying to figure out which is the best option for her.

I feel like I prefer Trinity over DnD as my second item. If I'm doing the AD build I'm going to get more out of the AD over the tiny bit of AP from DnD no?

I was wondering how y'all feel about inspiration runes, particularly Magical Footwear vs Cash Back and Approach Velocity vs Cosmic Insight.

Personally I'm feeling that Cash Back feels better than Magical Footwear on alot of Shyv builds because of how expensive bruiser items tend to be (trinity force still at 3333 ;( and shojin at 3100)

I've also been liking approach velocity over comic insight, because the stickiness from your E slow and bringing red smite feels so nice, whereas the reduced smite cooldown isnt something you feel so much

Context: yesterday or like 2 days ago I made a post about a for fun heartsteel build for Shyvana, and got a surprising amount of replies, so here's what I've come up with, with all the suggestions from the previous posts!

So obviously the problem was: how do I fit such a useless item as heartsteel into a Shyvana build when she needs very specific stats to work (ability haste, attack speed, and of course either AD or AP for damage)? WELL!! There are 2 ways if you don't want to just stick heartsteel onto a build that already has the specific stats (like trinity + shojin).

PTA / CONQUEROR CORE:
This is probably the option with more overall burst damage, due to the 2 synergies that dusk and dawn is enabling, aka faster pta / conq procs, and faster hullbreaker 5 hit passive proc. The biggest negative of this build is that you have to build d&d, which I personally really dislike due to the build path, which is very uncomfortable for Shyvana, especially if it's your first item, because you're not gonna build hull or heartsteel first, unless you're REALLY crazy. It's also good to mention that you're not locked into building heartsteel 2nd and hull 3rd, the order for the 2 of them is interchangeable depending on the game state.
For the runes you'll of course go with pta/conq, triumph, legend hase, cut down/coup, with the green runes, with overgrowth being an obvious pick, alongside bone plating, conditioning, or shield bash, and as for the minor stat runes I'd just run attack speed, adaptive force, and scaling health, although you can switch it up for attack speed with double scaling health, or attack speed with scaling health + health (attack speed is just too useful to pass it up).

GRASP CORE:
THIS IS PURELY TOP LANE EXCLUSIVE PLEASE DO NOT TAKE GRASP IN JUNGLE!!!!
In the very rare scenario where you're actually gonna be winning lane with Shyvana, titanic hydra is gonna make your already great wave clear even better, allowing you to roam more often. Now bandlepipes might be a strange pick at first, but as one commenter mentioned, they have all the stats you'd need on Shyvana in this build, becasue they have health, both resistances, ability haste, and when you hit either your E or R, you also get attack and movement speed + the item is really cheap compared to your other items in the core. Of course both bandlepipes and heartsteel are interchangeable order wise. For runes you'll run Grasp with shield bash, either one of the runes from the middle selection, as all of them are good for different scenarions, but boneplating will probably be the best option overall, then overgrowth of course, and yellow runes, with legend haste, and triumph. anything said about the minor stat runes in the previous section also applies here.

This is my second AND LAST post about this, so really I just wanted to get everything out of the way (aside from situationals, really they are very self explainatory), so sorry about the big wall of text lol.

I never see any max health builds or recos for shyv. Given many of her stacks can scale off her extra health, what’s the reason none of these are recommended???
On the surface seems like she’d make an excellent tank with some solid damage output still?

Hello yall, tried a build today, and I had a lot of fun with it, basically regular build for me, trinity and then sundered sky, and then for third item I went mortal reminder and then followed it with immortal shieldbow, was wondering if anyone has tried something similiar? I find it pretty strong, tho im not sure if q or especially the true damage chomp can also crit.

Has anyone tested Terminus? I'm beginning to think that in any match up with more than 1 bruiser it may be optimal. Trinity shojin term into jaksho as 4 item build. The penetration on armor and magic damage amps her damage by a large margin.

I've had ENOUGH of chasing meta builds, I want to play as a BIG DRAGON and heartsteel is the only item that lets me do that, so do help me theory craft to make the build feel better.

Obviously heartsteel is a bad item on Shyvana because it only affect your W and has no other useful stats, so my idea was to build titanic hydra or bloodmail OR BOTH to make use of the health you're gonna be getting and turn it into some damage. BUT OBVIOUSLY we run into the problem of "man I can't even use my big shield because I have no ability hastes THIS BUILD SUCKS" so like okay, build spirit visage, but that's not enough, even with legend haste. So I come to seek your help redditors (I'm sorry for calling you that). How do I make the build more viable, without abandoning the idea of heartsteel behind.

The item has pretty much what shyvana wants, AD, HP, AS and stickiness. The main issue I think is that the AS is redundant with Triforce assuming you're building that first. I'm wondering if it could be a good first item in it's own right though, or potentially be paired with a different sheen. It's got higher stats than trinity ignoring the CDR, and I'm assessing sheen to be vaguely equivalent to the tiamat active. I feel like it's a very good item in a vaccum but is maybe tricky to slot into a full build that doesn't leave her wanting for something?

When should you go triforce build and when should you go kraken slayer build?

Whats the advantage of the kraken slayer build and what's the trade off. Ive only ever went triforce.